GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessaar@

guardian.co.tt

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon says while this coun­try’s ex­ports con­tin­ue to do well, there is still sig­nif­i­cant room with­in the re­gion for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers to tap in­to, in terms of new and ex­ist­ing prod­ucts.

“In 2022, Cari­com im­port­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$31 bil­lion from the rest of the world (i.e. ex­tra-re­gion­al im­ports); with our ex­ports to the re­gion be­ing just about five per cent of their de­mand,” she ex­plained.

Gopee-Scoon fur­ther ad­vised that while seek­ing to ex­pand the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, fo­cus must not on­ly be placed on in­creas­ing out­put, but al­so in di­ver­si­fy­ing prod­ucts.

“New prod­ucts add val­ue and al­so dif­fer­en­ti­ates us. As a coun­try, more di­ver­si­fied ex­ports im­prove ex­port lev­els, ex­pand mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ties, and al­so al­lows us to build on our sol­id foun­da­tion.

“The la­bel, ‘Proud­ly Made in Trinidad and To­ba­go,’ should al­ways evoke an un­com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tion of qual­i­ty, sat­is­fac­tion, and a com­pet­i­tive edge,” she added, main­tain­ing that in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy must con­tin­ue to rev­o­lu­tion­ize busi­ness­es and re­shape in­dus­tries.

“Our lo­cal busi­ness­es must rec­og­nize its trans­for­ma­tive po­ten­tial and em­brace this new era,” the trade min­is­ter added.

For ex­am­ple, Sum­mit Lug­gage, she not­ed which is the first oc­cu­pant of the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, will soon be pro­duc­ing high qual­i­ty lug­gage for ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al brands for the US and EU mar­kets.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Gopee-Scoon said dis­cus­sions are tak­ing place with an­oth­er ma­jor for­eign in­vestor who is seek­ing to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty and high­tech ce­ram­ic prod­ucts for both com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al ap­pli­ca­tions.

She added that as a di­rect ben­e­fit of Cari­com’s fun­da­men­tal ex­ter­nal trade poli­cies, name­ly the Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff, Nes­tle (Trinidad and To­ba­go) was able ex­pand its lo­cal prod­uct line to in­clude a range of new ex­cit­ing prod­ucts.

The trade min­is­ter al­so not­ed that Cari­com is a crit­i­cal ex­port mar­ket for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s prod­ucts, rank­ing sec­ond on­ly to the Unit­ed States.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), Trinidad and To­ba­go’s to­tal ex­ports to Cari­com over the pe­ri­od 2012 to 2022 amount­ed to TT$112.4 bil­lion, av­er­ag­ing TT$10.2 bil­lion per year.